Former Day Care Center Owners Sue Local Church, Bishop Murry

Vindicator
June 18, 2014

http://www.vindy.com/news/2014/jun/18/former-day-care-center-owners-sue-local-church-bis/?nw

The former owners of a child day-care center at St. Paul the Apostle Church in New Middletown have sued the church and church officials.

They allege the officials breached the center’s lease and wrongly evicted the center’s owners because the center’s administrator married a man who was convicted of an attempted sex offense against a minor.

Besides the church, defendants are the Rev. Stephen Popovich, church pastor, and Bishop George Murry of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Youngstown.

The civil lawsuit was filed in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court by Atty. David L. Engler on behalf of St. Paul’s Childcare Center and its former owners, Linda Davis, and her daughter, Nicole Davis Fairchild, both of Austintown.

The complaint, which demands a jury trial, seeks damages in excess of $75,000.

Father Popovich terminated the child-care center’s lease and barred Davis and her daughter from the premises Oct. 25, 2013, forcing the sale of the business “at a distressed cost,” and causing Davis Fairchild to lose her job as child-care administrator, the suit says.

The church and its pastor “joined in a mob-like rush of judgment to push plaintiff corporation out of business based upon irrelevant and untrue statements,” the complaint says.

The church and its pastor forced the sale of the business because Davis Fairchild married a man with a criminal past, the complaint alleges.

In July 2011, Davis Fairchild married Eric R. Fairchild, who had been sentenced by Judge Maureen A. Sweeney in December 2010 to five years’ probation after he pleaded guilty to attempted gross sexual imposition on a female minor.

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